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So as an update to my story about Alberta's far right Wildrose party being okay with having bigots in its ranks, the "stiff challenge" Wildrose was supposedly going to raise didn't really materialize - Allison Redford and her Progressive Conservatives won a 12th majority government (Yes, 12th. Really.) with 62 seats. Wildrose got 17, Liberals and NDP four each.

And that's in Canada's most conservative province, so yes, one of the few truly feel good stories in Canadian politics in a while. Guess a friend of mine who went to university in Edmonton was on to something when he wondered who the heck was supporting these people because while he knew a lot of (fiscal) conservatives in Alberta he didn't know a lot of nutjobs.

(Though I still find it interesting that Calgary is both the only major Canadian city to have a Muslim mayor and the Canadian city that makes the news most often for stories involving white supremacists.)

Pakistan successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Wednesday, the military said, less than a week after rival India tested a missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads as far as Beijing and Eastern Europe.

That is what a New York-based human rights group is calling for in an open letter to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

In a strongly worded 14-paragraph letter dated 24th April, the Human Rights Foundation asked PM Lee and his government to reconsider its decision to bar Dr Chee, the secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party, from attending the annual Oslo Freedom Forum on 7-9 May as one of its 30 guest speakers.

The Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) is a conference about human rights first held in May 2009. However, as a bankrupt, Chee needs permission to go overseas from the Singapore government.

According to Thor Halvorssen, president of the foundation, they learned on Monday that Chee’s application for leave to travel to Oslo for the event had been denied by the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office.

“A general travel restriction aimed at preventing a bankrupt individual from defrauding creditors may be legitimate. However, in this case, the travel restriction against Dr. Chee is aimed at further curtailing the freedom of expression of an opposition leader,” Halvorssen said in the open letter to Lee dated Tuesday.

Chee was declared bankrupt in February 2006, after losing two defamation lawsuits to former prime ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong. He was slapped with a hefty $500,000 bill in damages.

Halvorssen said Singapore is bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is widely regarded as customary international law.

“Article 19 of the Declaration states that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,’” he noted.

Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore, Chee said he saw no reason why he should be barred from attending the forum.

“The rationale for prohibiting a bankrupt from traveling is to prevent him/her from running away and not paying the creditors. If I had wanted to do that I would have left a long time ago,” he said.

“Another reason is that they don't want the bankrupt to squander his or her money and not pay it to the creditors. Again, this is not a concern as the organisers of the forum have undertaken to pay all of my expenses for the visit… so the reason for not allowing my travel seems to be more political than anything else,” he added.

In an email interview with Yahoo! Singapore, Halvorssen said, “The prime minister has the opportunity to show the international community that his government will allow someone to criticize his politics. If he ignores our letter, it merely reinforces the growing perception across the globe that Singapore is not a democracy.”

This is not the first time Dr Chee has been denied permission to travel overseas for overseas functions.

He was once allowed to leave Singapore in 2009 to visit his ailing father-in-law who subsequently passed away.

Yahoo! Singapore has been in touch with the Prime Minister’s Office but has yet to receive a reply. The government, however, has previously defended its human rights record.

The open letter has also been published on U.S. online news site Huffington Post, which has published the letter in full. Read the letter here in full.

Initial reaction to the open letter has been mixed.

On the Huffington Post website, Jeffrey Tas commented, “As far as I know and in my opinion, there are worse infringements of "human rights" in for example Middle East, China, India, as well as in parts of Africa… I support Singapore's decision not to grant Dr. Chee leave, because in as so far as the actions of Dr. Chee go, he does not represent Singapore, he does not represent the general Singaporean, and he does not give a fair assessment of Singapore and how the system works.”

However, another reader, Dennis Cowan, urged the Singapore government to reconsider its decision.

“The right to challenge, debate and criticise will never go away and dissatisfaction in human behaviour must be addressed and reasoned with...denying rights only leads to frustration and unhappiness in both directions... permit Dr Chee to be seen and heard by those who want to hear him speak, even if you don't.”

Is Mitt Romney attending? Or Rick Santorum? If so, then give the green light.

It would be nice to have these populist politicians meet their foreign counterpart.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

"The Norwegian on trial for killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage railed at
psychiatrists who diagnosed him as psychotic, saying on Wednesday their report
contained "evil, fictional inventions"."

"The Norwegian on trial for killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage railed at
psychiatrists who diagnosed him as psychotic, saying on Wednesday their report
contained "evil, fictional inventions"."

And here is an interesting commentary that I don't want to read initially :

Quote:

Originally Posted by TreyfTips

Given the stagnant economy, advertising is a zero sum game. Business can't afford to spend a larger part of gross income on advertising.

So, whatever rate Facebook income grows at, that money has to come from somewhere.

It's mutual suicide for two major competitors to stand toe to toe and slug it out on Facebook.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Whenever I think that fictional characters like Monster's Johan are implausible, someone like Breivik comes along to remind me that such people sadly actually exist.

I haven't paid close attention to the trial, but I'm still wondering how he can claim he picked off dozens of innocent people on that island in "self-defense." (Yes, I understand his broader argument about immigration being a threat and so forth, but "self-defense" usually carries the implication of a direct threat to you personally. I don't see how mass assassination can even vaguely be construed as self-defense as a legal argument.)

"The Norwegian on trial for killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage railed at
psychiatrists who diagnosed him as psychotic, saying on Wednesday their report
contained "evil, fictional inventions"."

Whenever I think that fictional characters like Monster's Johan are implausible, someone like Breivik comes along to remind me that such people sadly actually exist.

I haven't paid close attention to the trial, but I'm still wondering how he can claim he picked off dozens of innocent people on that island in "self-defense." (Yes, I understand his broader argument about immigration being a threat and so forth, but "self-defense" usually carries the implication of a direct threat to you personally. I don't see how mass assassination can even vaguely be construed as self-defense as a legal argument.)

Come to think of it, such people have experiences in their lives which made them like that. I think it is more of society's "can't-be-bothered" issue with such "ranting-and-raving" people and the lack of moderate views around him that turned him into a mass murderer.

We probably would never know about his true motivations until we meet the people around him. Social pressure is an oft-ignored factor in categorising lunatics, psychopaths and their likes; nobody really likes to have even the smallest amount of blame put on them.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Come to think of it, such people have experiences in their lives which made them like that. I think it is more of society's "can't-be-bothered" issue with such "ranting-and-raving" people and the lack of moderate views around him that turned him into a mass murderer.

We probably would never know about his true motivations until we meet the people around him. Social pressure is an oft-ignored factor in categorising lunatics, psychopaths and their likes; nobody really likes to have even the smallest amount of blame put on them.

What are you suggesting?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Whenever I think that fictional characters like Monster's Johan are implausible, someone like Breivik comes along to remind me that such people sadly actually exist.

I haven't paid close attention to the trial, but I'm still wondering how he can claim he picked off dozens of innocent people on that island in "self-defense." (Yes, I understand his broader argument about immigration being a threat and so forth, but "self-defense" usually carries the implication of a direct threat to you personally. I don't see how mass assassination can even vaguely be construed as self-defense as a legal argument.)

Until now, the downfall of Mr. Bo has been cast largely as a tale of a populist who pursued his own agenda too aggressively for some top leaders in Beijing and was brought down by accusations that his wife had arranged the murder of Neil Heywood, a British consultant, after a business dispute. But the hidden wiretapping, previously alluded to only in internal Communist Party accounts of the scandal, appears to have provided another compelling reason for party leaders to turn on Mr. Bo.

Apparently Bo tapped the phone of, among others, Hu Jintao when the latter was visiting Chongqing. The article also claims that Wang Lijun, Bo's former deputy who came running to the US consulate, had wiretapped Bo and his now-infamous wife.

I want the movie rights; this story just gets better and better.

I would think the rule in China is that wiretapping is acceptable only if the people listening hold higher positions of power than those being listened to.

I was at Fry's (a U.S. west coast based super electronics store) a few months ago and my friend and I wandered near the TV section. They had a side-by-side demonstration of HD vs. non-HD TV screens. Both were over 50" wide, both were from teh same manufacturer, but one was HD, the other wasn't. The display was set up to play Battle: Los Angeles simultaneously. The regular TV looked as it would when viewed at the theater. With the HD TV, the effects looked fake, and were quite obvious. It looked really bad. Like Galactica: 1980 bad.

HD might be fine for sports and whatnot, but I don't think it works so well for movies.

By the by, if you've never been to a Fry's you should go. They're...interesting.